Many of the leathers I use when making watch straps are full grain, vegetable tanned leathers. Full grain leathers are my preference to work with because they have the best structure for a watch strap, and also because a watch strap made from a full grain leather will usually develop a lovely patina over the course of it’s life. As I explained in a blog post in 2016 about the different types of leather, a full grain leather is made from the outer surface of the animal skin, and is left fully intact. This results in a strong & durable leather, but as a full grain leather is not sanded to conceal imperfections, it will display some marks caused during the animal’s life – personally I think this can add lots of character to the finished watch strap.
As you can probably imagine, most of the leather I use arrives in quite large pieces – usually a “side” at a time (as the name suggests, a side is half of the animal skin, so depending on the species and size of the animal this can be a very large piece indeed). On these large pieces there are normally some areas that I won’t use for my straps, either because they are not structurally sound (the belly, for example, is often too soft and spongy for a watch strap), or because they are too badly marked.
I know some of you will be surprised to read that I will often not use part of the leather because it is too heavily marked, but I have to remember that my customers are selecting which leather to commission a watch strap from based on the photos on my website. So although a strap made from African Kudu or Dark Kudu can be expected to be a little “gnarly” (because the store photos show that to be the case, and the nature of these leathers is explained on their store pages), that’s not the case with most of the straps I sell. A few minor imperfections can be expected with any full grain leather of course, but I’m conscious that my customers want to receive a strap that looks as close to the photos on the store pages as possible, and so routinely I cut away and discard small areas that as a result can’t be used.
Normally these discarded areas are too small to make a watch strap from in any case, but sometimes a skin is marked quite badly in a larger area, and occasionally an area large enough to make a watch strap from (or even several). This was the case with last side of Heavy Horse leather I received – a very large side but with stretch marks across the shoulder area (as can be seen from the photographs on this page, these are not scratches or scars – the marking is a series of creases in the surface of the leather caused by the animal rapidly gaining or loosing weight at some point in it’s life). The leather is structurally sound however and I like a heavily marked leather for myself, so I couldn’t resist it (actually when this happens I always see this as a perk of my work – although they are off-cuts, in many ways I see them as the choice pieces of the hide).
So here is the result of a couple of hours of work yesterday morning – a new Heavy Horse strap (with dark brown stitching) for my beat up old Panerai 87. Dark brown leather works so well with this watch in my opinion. I hope you like it.
For anyone who is interested, there is a little of this heavily marked Heavy Horse leather left, so if you have been considering a Heavy Horse strap and want one with a little more marking than is usually the case just get in touch and let me know. I only have enough for another four or five straps however (and as always they will be sold on a first come, first served basis to people who request them when they order), so please get in touch ASAP and I’ll let you know if there is any left.